“To be gazed at is one danger; to be manhandled is another. Women as a rule are unfamiliar with violence, they have not been through the tussles of childhood and youth as have men; and now the girl is laid hold of, swept away in a bodily struggle in which the man is the stronger. She is no longer free to dream, to delay, to maneuver: she is in his power, at his disposal.”

— Simone de Beauvoir, book The Second Sex

Bk. 2, Pt.. 3, Ch. 3: Sexual initiation. p. 427 (1974 Vintage edition)
The Second Sex (1949)

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Simone de Beauvoir152

French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, po… 1908–1986

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